> The basis of economic value for Marx is 'abstract labor'. Abstract labor
> is indeed social labor, but it does not follow that all social labor is
> abstract. The labor performed by a servant for his master is social, but it
> is not abstract. So what I'm suggesting is that the labor of a hairdresser
> or a retail worker is social in the same concrete sense that a servant's
> labor is social - ie, it is useful for others; but it is not abstract,
> because it does not produce commodities that are exchangeable with each
> other independently of their concrete usefulness.
>

Paula, you are entitled to your theory of value. However, I do not think
that what you wrote above can be found in classical political economy nor
Marx. I think it is a misunderstanding of "abstract labour" or "human labour
in the abstract". Good and services have economic value because they require
expenditure of human labour.

Moreover, your theory gives no explanation to what regulates the prices of
services. I don't have the empirical results here but I cannot recall that
service industries had ratios of price to labour-value that deviated
significantly from the mean.